Hi...

On an impulse, we decided to take the kids bowling. Max has a fascination with knocking things down and we thought he might enjoy it. Max loved it, Tyler had fun, Tessa liked the action, and I proved that I truly am an awkward geek forever and ever.


Tyler showed him the little hand dryers and Max would sit and dry his hands right before his turn. He was very serious about it.


Max and his bowling ball. I realize toward the end that my bowling ball was the same weight as his. I thought it felt heavy, but I must be growing weak in my old age.


A real mother would not put her baby girl in blue clothes without first placing a beautiful bow on her head. I could say I'm just letting Tessa's true beauty shine through, but mostly I'm just lazy.


What can I say? Yes, I did try! And since I've already embarrassed myself I may as well add that this was my good game. The next game I bowled 4 rounds (or whatever they are) and my score was 3. No, I did not forget to put a number after the 3, it was just 3. The word "pathetic" comes to my mind. The last three rounds I borrowed Tyler's ball and got a couple of spares to redeem myself, so I ended on a somewhat good note with a very bad score. Too bad the evil people who gathered behind me to watch my humiliation didn't see that, they left when I started letting Max bowl for me. I would have thrown my too light bowling ball at them, but obviously my aim is not very good.

9 months:

*cruising around the furniture
*saying "mama", "dada", and "nanananana"
*standing on her own (she gets into a little squat then pushes herself up, her balance is pretty amazing)
*claps (but I think this one is at least a month old)
*waves
*shakes her head "no"
*does "so big"
*loves to play with cars

For Max's birthday we went to the aquarium as did the rest of Dallas. We couldn't have picked a more crowded day to go. Really, there were times where you could hardly move from the crush of all the people. Tyler saw a girl from his class there who told him that last time she went there were about four people total. We seem to always pick the crazy days to go places. Max still loved it, and Tessa is game for whatever, so all in all it was a good time.

I think the shark to the right might have been dead. We stayed in the tunnel for at least 10 minutes and it didn't move an inch.


Max looks like a little chimpanzee picking bugs out of Tyler's hair.


There were some gigantic fish in this fish tank. I'm talking way bigger than me fish. Like at the bottom of Lake Powell by the dam where there are 6 foot catfish whose whiskers will slice you in half big. Of course, my camera is so slow that by the time the flash would charge the big fish would be gone and I would have a picture of Max looking at water. I did manage to snag one of this turtle though.


Cute little penguins. Cute little Tessa. This was quite a feat to get this picture with the 10,000 other people checking out the penguins.